


Queer Shoulder to the Wheel

by futureboy (PokeRowan)



Category: Bill & Ted (Movies)
Genre: 80s, Coming Out, First Kiss, Internalized Homophobia, M/M, Period-Typical Homophobia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-19
Updated: 2017-11-19
Packaged: 2019-02-04 08:52:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,051
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12767412
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PokeRowan/pseuds/futureboy
Summary: Maybe there’s something wrong with him. Chasing babes has, of late, seemed like less of a pastime and more of a... chore.Bill is stuck on the idea that people don't have rules, except he occasionally gets distracted by Ted's coolest new possession. Warnings for homophobic slurs (as with the canon) and internal conflict/self-discovery, as well as Bill S. Preston's ridiculous thought processes.





	Queer Shoulder to the Wheel

**Author's Note:**

> Title from Ginsberg's 'America'.

Bill might be stupid, but he’s not an _idiot_.

For all their alternative music and obscure interests, he and Ted know, and follow, most rules. He doesn't smoke in public places. Hell, neither of them really smoke or drink at all. They know where an Oxford comma should go, and they can follow the basic principles of time travel (after it's explained to them, of course). San Dimas Time is inconvenient, but not incomprehensible.

'No' means _no_.

'Yeah, maybe' means _yeah, right_.

'Non-heinous' is good, because 'non-' is a negative, so 'non- _non_ -heinous' is _very_ bad indeed.

Things can be facts. Math, for example, used to be easy - two add two always equals four, but these days the letters tend to make things harder. English class has facts ( _i_ before _e_ , except after _c_ , and apostrophes to signify contractions, boys!). It also has exceptions to the facts, which are simple to remember but many in number.

History is always the hardest, because the questions aren't 'what happened' - they're 'what _could_ have happened?', or 'what _should_ have happened?', and those aren't facts, they're speculation.

Speculation makes Bill most uneasy. _Perturbed_ , perhaps. He may even stretch to _overwrought_.

They’re on the cusp of September now. Just three months after the prom. (A prodigious amount of history has been made during this short time.) School’s started up again, and after a summer’s worth of juggling guitar practice and seasonal occupational placement, which sounded a thousand times more distinguished than ‘Bill sold ice cream for minimum wage for several weeks’, they’re ready to start the next chapter in their lives.

“I can’t believe we’re seniors, dude,” Ted whispers, over roll call.

“Yeah. Seems like yesterday we were a million years ago.”

“Seems like yesterday we had babes as dates, too,” Ted supplies. “I can’t believe your mom ran away with Joa--”

“Shut up, Ted,” Bill says.

“--Joanna,” he finishes. “Hey, does that make her kind of your stepmom, too? Or does that _kind_ of make your mom your sister-in-law?”

Bill turns around and stares him dead in the eye. “Shut _up_ , Ted.”

He doesn’t push it anymore, for once. Bill’s thankful. His dad’s been a mess of monumental proportions - the only mess he’s seen bigger would be the food fight that broke out in seventh grade that _totally_ wasn’t his and Ted’s fault, no way.

Anyway. Turns out Missy has a thing for older _men_ , and _younger_ women. It’s bad enough his ex-girlfriend is going out with his ex-stepmom. He doesn’t need Ted reminding him that Bill is not the Casanova of their duo; Ted can afford to voluntarily give up babes as impressive as Elizabeth, because if he tried, he could probably worm his way into anyone’s heart. The only person who ever shot him down was Missy, and that makes Bill want to delve into a Joan of Arc-esque prayer session, because he’s not sure what he’d do if his ex-stepmom stole his best friend, too.

Ted pokes his elbow. (Bill’s arm jerks, and he nearly takes his own eye out with a ballpoint pen.) “At least they’re still our bandmates, dude,” he grins, “they’re _most_ spectacular at supporting our guitar solos.”

“True,” Bill huffs.

Ted jabs at his funny bone again. “Hey, after science class, meet me in the parking lot, okay?”

“...Why?”

“You’ll see,” Ted says, and Bill can hear the grin in his hushed tones. He sticks his hand out behind his seat, waiting for Ted to air guitar silently on his palm with newly-calloused fingers. _Excellent_.

Which means that Bill spends his Biology period considering what Ted could have possibly kept secret from him. Ted’s not the best at keeping secrets - neither of them are, except when it matters - so he can only wonder what matters so much that he hasn’t got a clue what’s happening.

Not that it’s hard.

“Preston? You even listening?” says the babe next to him, in a low voice. Jody Davis. Tight, curly, dark hair, and even darker irises, which are currently side-eyeing him for drifting off.

“Hmm,” he says intelligently. “...Yeah. Sure.”

“Really?” she whispers. “Who’s Darwin?”

“Evolution guy,” he says confidently.

“That’s all you’ve gotten out of forty minutes of lesson time?”

“Look,” he murmurs, shrugging, “if I ever need to know more, I’ll just travel back in time and have a direct, scientifical conversation with him. No problem.”

Jody snorts with laughter very heavily, attracting the teacher’s attention, and tries to play it cool to avoid trouble. When the danger’s passed, her shoulders start shaking so hard with suppressed mirth that her teardrop earrings wobble.

“You’re somethin’ else, Preston.”

Last year, he would have been thrilled, to the point of elation, that Jody Davis was flashing him that welcoming smile. She has perfect teeth, after all.

He smiles back, but it’s somewhat subdued. And it’s far less flirty than he thought it would be.

 

* * *

 

The thing Bill has discovered about babes is that they are a savoury concept in _theory_ , but in _practice_ , they are much gnarlier, and often stranger in romantics than they are in platonics. (Huh. Why does ‘romantic’ become ‘romance’, but ‘platonic’ doesn’t become… ‘platonce’? Weird.)

The point at hand, though, is that much like history, _people don’t have rules_. They have ‘should have’s, and ‘could have’s, and ‘never will’s, and aw, _shit_ , Bill _totally_ digs Ted and it sucks.

“Bogus,” he mutters under his breath, grabbing his lyrics book from his locker and slamming it. He should correct himself, for purposes of moral integrity - people do have rules. They don’t make sense. They contradict each other. No-one has the same set of rules, and a lot of the time, people don’t even follow them properly.

Like the rules for teenage dudes. Look at babes. Chase the babes. He might be able to get on board somewhat, if ‘ _respect_ the babes’ was a rule, too, but it’s not. There are quite a few members on the football team who tried to get in with head cheerleader Buffy Matchette, and got a swift high kick to the nads when they declined to back off.

Maybe there’s something wrong with him. Chasing babes has, of late, seemed like less of a pastime and more of a... chore.

By the time he makes it down the parking lot, it’s practically deserted. No-one wants to stick around on a Friday afternoon. No-one except for Bill, and Ted, and…

And what is _that?_

Ted grins.

“... _Woahhhh!”_

“Voila,” Ted says, except he pronounces it as ‘ _voy-lah_ ’.

It’s a van. A van of gargantuan size. The paintwork is horrendous, the interior is scuffed, and one of the wing mirrors is held on with duct tape. It’s the most beautiful thing Bill’s ever seen in his whole life.

“One door for you,” Ted says, gesturing at the passenger door, “one door for _me_ \--”

And he ducks around the rear wheels, throwing open the back.

“And room round here for the band! Three doors!”

He looks so pleased with himself, in the way that’s contagious every time he smiles. Bill thinks if it’s a rule that he has to be happy when Ted is, then it’s a rule he’s willing to follow. Right now, though, he’s just… _astounded_. “Ted,” he breathes, “ _how_ …?”

Ted starts listing on his fingers. “Summer job, mostly. But my dad put the Oats Academy money into a maybe-college fund, just in case, and gave me some that was leftover. I think it was an apology. Oh, and my mom finally sent over that child support she owed, so I got some of that too. Whaddaya think?”

“Ted,” Bill says seriously, “it looks like the Mystery Machine. This is _cosmic_. This is _substantial_ \-- this is _Herculean_ \--”

“Right? It almost makes flipping burgers all break worth it!”

“You _did_ look most fetching in the hairnet,” Bill points out.

“Shut up, Bill.”

“Does it work? Can we drive it?” he asks, darting round to the passenger door. “Can you drop me home?”

“Sure thing!” Ted beams, holding the keys aloft.

“ _Excellent!”_

They clamber in: “duuude,” Bill says, “I didn’t even know you had your permit yet. This is _poetical_.”

Ted jams his keys in the ignition, suddenly looking embarrassed. “Well,” he says, “I… I wanted to surprise ya.”

“You did?”

“Like, yeah. I thought maybe we could work on it together, get it painted… Put the band logo on… I dunno, it’s like, it could be our tour ride.”

He peers up uneasily from the steering wheel, through a curtain of his own hair. It’s like he’s expecting Bill to say _no_ , or _yeah, maybe_. Bill would never respond with any other sentiment than a resounding _yes, yes, yes, most triumphant, Ted!_ , but for a brief, terrifying second, there’s a lurch in his stomach which tells his brain to say _I love you_.

“Unequivocally,” he says instead. “Ted, you’re a _genius_. Consider me totally surprised, dude.”

 

* * *

 

“Does it ever bother you?” Ted asks him one afternoon that week. He’s flat on his back against the mini-trampoline Bill keeps in the bedroom corner, pencilling out little numbers for a math assignment.

“What?”

“Joanna and Missy. I know she’s in the band, and we’re all still cool or whatever, but...”

Bill sits up against his headboard, and thinks about it.

“Nahhh,” he finally decides. “It makes us like… Ozzy Osbourne. Or Alex van Halen. Even bands that people like the princesses dig, like ABBA, or Fleetwood Mac. Everyone does marriage weird, dude.”

“Oh,” says Ted. And then: “do you still like her?”

“...No,” Bill says, very carefully.

“Oh,” says Ted again.

Bill pushes aside his math worksheets, and picks up his tearaway word-of-the-day calendar so that his hands have something to fiddle with. “Do you still like Elizabeth?” he says, not looking at him on purpose.

“No, dude, that’s why I broke up with her.”

“So you didn’t like her like that, and Joanna didn’t like me like that,” Bill says, laying it all out to make sense of it. “Dude, we have the worst babe luck.”

Ted mumbles something, and scratches a big line through his latest equation. He’s always been better at algebra, because he’s good at working stuff out - Bill’s forte was drawing, so he usually traded geometry answers for ηs and χs. They usually strike the balance between a whole unit. Like with their literature assignments - easy, when Ted’s so good at grammar and Bill’s got the vocabulary to bulk it out.

“Didn’t catch that, dude.”

“I don’t think I _want_ babe luck,” Ted says, louder this time, although he doesn’t meet his eyes at all.

It feels like there’s something he’s missing, between the lines, like a metaphor or an analogy or some subtext that evades him in English class. But Bill can’t fight through the fog of perplexity strongly enough to clear up the matter, so in place of understanding, he says, “Ted, my friend? That’s perfectly alright by me. Wanna go get slushies?”

Ted stands up so suddenly that his algebra scatters in all directions. “Bill, my friend? You make an _excellent_ argument against the educational obligations to which we are subject.”

They can _drive_ down to the Circle K now, which is a novelty that hasn’t worn off in the six short days Ted has owned the van. A walk that used to take them fifteen minutes can be cut down to two. He’s sure they’ll resume the journey on foot after a couple of weeks, when they finally have a chat about how much they’ve been spending on gas, but until then he’s content to enjoy it.

Even though Bill buys him their most beloved of flavours - cherry - Ted makes strange expressions from their perch in the back of the van.

“You got brain freeze?” Bill asks him. His feet don’t touch the tarmac, so he swings them lazily. September totally crept up on them this year. The heat’s not even dropped below the nineties yet.

Ted shakes his head, his hair whipping around crazily. “No, I'm… I’m fine.”

“Clearly not, dude,” Bill points out, “you’re making constipation faces, spill.”

He shifts, poking a finger into the interior door handle from where the back doors are flung open. “My dad called me a fag,” he confesses.

“What?”

“Yeah,” Ted says sadly, “he said that even though we passed history and didn’t flunk, that he should’ve sent me to Oats Military Academy anyway, because it would stop me being such a sissy.”

“ _Bogus_.”

“I know!”

“Well, I don’t think you’re a fag,” Bill shrugs.

Ted takes a long, drawn out sip of his slushie through the straw, and eventually says, in a very small voice, “I don’t think I wanna use that word anymore, dude.”

“What,” begins Bill, and then realises that he can’t ask for clarification without using any of the possibilities. “The… the _word?_ The ‘f’ one?”

“Yeah,” Ted says. “It made me feel… _bad._ Most terrible, in fact. And if I've said that and made someone _else_ feel bad… Well, that's not excellent. That's not excellent at _all_.”

“No,” Bill agrees.

He spends the whole next day trying to get it figured out in his head, because it’s a wrench in the works, to say the least. He tries to imagine writing it out - actually doing so when he’s in biology class, of course, would be too risky - and comes up with some statements.

_Ted’s dad thinks the ‘f’ word is an insult - one to use against Ted._

_Ted thinks the ‘f’ word is hurtful._

_The ‘f’ word, therefore, cannot be used by either party, and should be avoided. This feels like a rule._

_...I don’t know any other words to fill the absence the ‘f’ word has left._

_…I don’t know what I am._

“Bogus,” he breathes.

“It’s not that hard,” says Jody Davis from behind his left shoulder. “Let’s have a look at your answers, I bet you’ve done fine.”

She leans over to check his work. Bill doesn’t look down her shirt. He doesn’t feel like it. (Actually, he sorta feels like throwing up.)

“Mrs. Simon...? May I be excused?”

“What for, Preston?”

He pulls his hand down from the air, because all the blood in his body feels like it’s draining down to his toes, and he really doesn’t want to exacerbate the situation. “Restroom,” he says, and practically sprints down the school halls when permission is granted.

It almost passes. He spends a minute or two in the doorway of one of the stalls, resting his forehead against the cool plastic and remembering how to breathe. The nausea begins to dissipate. He can feel it, like the rumble of a bass guitar, thrumming through his bones. It _almost_ gets comfortingly better.

The restroom door bursts open.

“Dude? You okay?”

Bill bends over double, and throws up.

“Ew,” says Ted, and watches with morbid fascination.

 

* * *

 

He finally confesses on a cool day in the middle of the month. The temperature has begun to drop, now; soon, his wearing of cut-off shirts will have to be done through sheer force of will, instead of necessity. For now, though, he enjoys having his stomach on show - he hates tucking shirts in, and there’s always some bonehead teacher who tries to make him look more presentable.

“What’s been up with you?” says Ted slowly. Neither of them are the brightest crayon in the box, but clearly Bill has left his carefully-crafted facade slip somewhat.

“Nothin’,” he shrugs.

“I call bull,” says Ted cheerily.

They’re sitting in the sunshine, with their backs to the side of the van, late in the afternoon. Bill’s gotta get back for dinner soon.

He huffs. “I, uh… I can’t say.”

“...Why not?”

“Not I _won’t_ ,” he clarifies, “I _can’t_. I don’t know the words for it, dude.”

Ted looks veritably mystified. “But you know _tons_ of words, Bill.”

“Yeah, Ted,” he says patiently, “but you asked me not to say the one I already knew. And I don’t know any others for it.”

“Oh. Well, then, that’s easy. I’ll just give you a free pass this time around.”

Man, things are way less complicated when Ted’s around to give him the answers. (Usually.)

“Promise not to freak?”

“Of course,” Ted grins.

Bill takes a really, really deep breath, and lets it out in a big _whoosh_. “I think I might be a fag, dude,” he says simply.

“...For real?”

“For real,” he confirms.

Ted appears to contemplate this. He drags his fingers across the asphalt they’re sat on, and runs his pinky across the grime of the body of his van.

“So, like… gay?”

“Oh, that works. Thanks, dude, I was going crazy not being able to think about it properly.”

“No problem,” says Ted dazedly.

“Ted? Dude? Are we good? I don’t wanna mess anything up. Oh, _nooo_ , what if I broke up the band? What if I ruined the future?”

“What?!” says Ted, even more bewildered, “Bill, calm down, you haven’t broke up the band. Wyld Stallyns forever, dude.”

“That’s a relief. So you still wanna play together?”

Ted looks at him like he’s stupid. He is, a little bit, and he might also be overreacting somewhat. “We’re destined for greatness, Bill,” he says reasonably, “we didn’t spend all summer practicing our instruments and working for the man to give up that easily.”

“That’s very true, Ted.”

“We already know we’re gonna be superstars. Doesn’t matter if the band’s gay or not, dude.”

(Bill doesn’t register this at the time, but later that night, in the dark, he realises that Ted had said ‘if _the band’s_ gay’, and not ‘if _you’re_ gay’. He’s not entirely sure what this implies, but he figures it’s probably something to do with how Joanna’s a little gay as well.)

 

* * *

 

The following Saturday, Ted fails to surface for their weekend jam session. Bill tries calling him - no answer, on all seven attempts - and finally decides that Ted probably has important business to attend to, so he shouldn’t bother him. After wandering around town for a while, because the record store is more pleasant to spend time in than when his dad mopes around the house on the weekend, he drifts back home with a Buzzcocks album and listens to it on repeat in his room.

Life’s pretty uneventful when he’s not spending time with Ted.

_\--Ever fallen in love-- in love with someone you shouldn’t’ve fallen in love with--?_

He throws a sneaker at the general direction of his hi-fi unit on the third runthrough. It doesn’t work, obviously, so he actually gets up to switch it all off properly, and finally flops down on the bed, in the silence and the dark.

He’s just beginning to doze when he hears his window slide open.

“Ted?”

There are a few noises. The resealing of the window. The thick _clunk_ of shoes as they’re discarded; a heavy jacket joins them, the buttons clicking against the skirting board. The soft sound of bedsprings, discreetly alerting him to the fact that a fall-chilled body is sliding under the covers beside him.

A sniffle.

“I didn’t see you all damn day, dude,” Bill murmurs, trying to force the drowsiness out from behind his eyes. “You launching a solo career already?”

The joke doesn’t quite land; Ted wheezes a little, sure, but the long arms that tighten around Bill’s midriff tell another story. It's like being enveloped by the worst feeling on Earth, except that in reality, it's just a most _uncommonly_ gangly teenager hugging him from behind.

He’s truly miserable.

Bill can’t stand it.

“Didja sneak out?” he prompts. He doesn’t dare roll over.

“Yeah,” says Ted, into the part of his back where spine meets neck. It’s non-pro of Bill to have gone to bed in his day clothes, but Ted’s breath warming the nape of his neck is totally worth it.

“Wanna talk about it?”

“He says he's going to 'punish the fairy' out of me,” he says, and Bill feels all the air in his lungs escape in fright.

“Well,” he replied, thinking furiously. “We, um… We’ll just have to put it back in you again afterwards, that's all.”

The double entendre is not lost on his most educated counterpart. He feels Ted break into a grin against his shoulder.

“...Excellent.”

“Seriously, though,” Bill adds, rolling over onto his back, leaving Ted’s arm draped solidly across his ribs. “We’ll graduate, because of _course_ we will, we’re the _best_ , and then we’ll get an apartment across town. Or we’ll take your van and travel the whole country. Writing songs. Jamming in underpasses. The princesses would love a road trip. Hey, maybe we’ll get enough gigs that we can do a European tour.”

From this angle, he only has to turn slightly to the left to see Ted’s face, the prominence of his cheekbones and nose cast silver in the moonlight. Two things occur to Bill; that he should probably avoid glancing down at Ted’s mouth as often as he’s currently doing, and that the only thing worse that Ted being sad was maybe Ted being _dead_ , because both would result in Bill missing his dopey smile.

“Our van,” Ted says.

“Huh?”

“ _Our_ van. You said it was just mine. It’s not. It’s _ours_.”

“Ohh,” says Bill and then Ted’s drawing back, except he’s not, not at all - he’s propping himself up on the elbow that isn’t resting on the hem of Bill’s cutoff shirt, and peering right down at him through that curtain of hair. Now that Bill’s eyes have adjusted to the lack of light a little better, he can see the telltale signs of tear tracks and sore eyes.

“You’ll be able to tie it up soon, dude.”

“What?”

“Your hair,” Bill says, “it’s getting long.”

Ted winces. “I was... gonna get it cut.”

“ _You_ were gonna get it cut? Or your _dad_ was gonna get it cut?” says Bill, as dubiously as he can when they’re both talking in absolute hushed tones, “because _Ted_ , my good man. You’d look _totally_ rock star with it tied back.”

“You think so?”

“Yeah, sure! Think of the headbanging, dude.”

Ted retracts his arm from Bill’s midriff to smooth his fringe down. Bill is _most_ disappointed - especially with the cold patch it’s left behind - but he tries to keep a good poker face.

And then it comes back, quickly, _under_ the shirt. He barely has time to register the large and warm hand, splayed wide over the bottom of his ribcage, when Ted leans in at a way, _way_ angle and presses their mouths together.

He can understand the angle. They both have what history might describe as _Roman noses_. That factor’s been resolutely set out of his mind, however, because he’s inhaling deeply with sheer shock and he’s trying to remember to open his mouth and kiss back; his hand strays up Ted’s forearm to wander around a bit and hang out, but at this point he’s _really_ not controlling it at all. Bill’s swimming in sensations like Ted’s fringe tickling his forehead, and their teeth accidentally clicking together, and the slow drag of his bottom lip when Ted does whatever it is he’s doing. It’s slow, and careful, like they’re shaken up soda bottles that could explode at any second.

People don’t have rules. That’s... pretty great sometimes.

It keeps them unpredictable, and Bill hadn’t expected this in the _slightest_.

They separate silently; Ted leans back on his elbow again. The night seems a lot more well-lit when Bill eventually lets his eyes flicker open.

“First rate,” he breathes, and Ted cracks the biggest grin ever.

“Were you serious about the apartment?”

“Unquestionably. I was serious about _everything_ , dude.”

“Cool.”

Ted’s fingers draw back and dance over the palm that until two seconds ago, was still loosely curled around Ted’s forearm - _secret air guitar_ \- and at some point in the night, they amble away from making out and fall asleep on each other. No wonder Wyld Stallyns survives so long - the frontmen have a habit of getting closer and closer, after all. Bill’s gonna get so many tremendous lyrics out of this.

For now, though, he lets himself sprawl out over his bed, still fully dressed, and occasionally huffs Ted’s hair away from his nose. He dreams of their van, and a European tour.

**Author's Note:**

> The album Bill's listening to is 'Love Bites' by The Buzzcocks, and the song is "Ever Fallen in Love (With Someone You Shouldn't've)".
> 
> I'm on tumblr - here's my [main blog](http://futureboy.tumblr.com/) and my [ao3 blog](http://futureboy-ao3.tumblr.com/) \- and I really love my time travel adventure films. Come say hi!


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